Online identity verification entered a new phase in 2025. Across adult platforms, gambling, financial services, crypto and online safety, identity checks moved from being a back-office compliance task to something that directly shapes product design, conversion and trust.
As we enter 2026, businesses must ask themselves how they’re delivering identity checks at scale without damaging user experience, and how are they mitigating increased data risk and fragmenting platforms with point solutions.
Below, we dive into the state of online identity verification at the end of 2025, and how those requirements are expected to evolve in 2026.
Online Safety Act age verification and Ofcom-approved assurance
The most immediate regulatory shift in 2025 came from the UK Online Safety Act. From July 2025, services hosting pornographic content were required to implement “highly effective age assurance” to prevent children from accessing adult material.
Ofcom’s guidance made clear that self-declaration and simple tick-boxes do not meet this threshold. Instead, services must use age verification methods that are robust, privacy-preserving and resistant to circumvention.
In 2026, this is expected to evolve in scale. Ofcom has confirmed that enforcement will extend beyond adult platforms to user-generated content, live streaming, dating and social services where age risk is material. Platforms that implemented one-off solutions in 2025 are already reassessing whether those tools will hold up as volumes increase and scrutiny tightens.
Gambling, financial services and automated KYC checks
In parallel, regulated sectors continued to face pressure to modernise KYC and onboarding.
The UK Gambling Commission reinforced its expectations around age and identity verification as part of customer due diligence, particularly where operators rely on third-party suppliers. The Commission’s Remote gambling and software technical standards require operators to verify customer age and identity before permitting gambling activity.
In 2025, regulated sectors continued to face pressure to modernise onboarding and customer due diligence. Gambling operators, lenders, payments firms and marketplaces are all balancing the same tension: stronger assurance and lower tolerance for fraud, without adding steps that push genuine users away.
In the UK, financial services regulation also kept moving towards outcomes-based expectations. Under the FCA’s guidance on digital identity, firms can use digital identity systems to support customer due diligence where it is appropriate for the risk, and where the approach is reliable and auditable. That has accelerated interest in automated KYC checks that rely on authoritative sources, rather than repeated document uploads and manual review.
Crypto, synthetic identity fraud detection and ongoing assurance
Crypto platforms entered 2025 under increased international pressure to strengthen onboarding and monitoring. While UK crypto regulation remains transitional, firms registered under the Money Laundering Regulations are required to apply customer due diligence and ongoing monitoring. This is in part due to HM Treasury’s Cryptoasset regulation, where a phase one consultation in 2023 confirmed that moving forward, identity verification expectations will increasingly align with traditional financial services.
This has sharpened focus on synthetic identity fraud detection and the limits of document-only checks. Static identity evidence struggles to surface fabricated identities that pass basic validation but lack real-world footprint. As a result, 2026 is expected to see wider adoption of perpetual KYC solutions that can re-verify attributes against live data sources over time.
e-KYC frameworks and interoperability heading into 2026
By the end of 2025, identity verification across regulated sectors had begun to shift away from isolated, one-off checks. Instead, platforms are increasingly designing identity as reusable infrastructure, where verified attributes can support multiple interactions over time.
This change has been driven by practical pressure rather than new legislation. Repeating full identity checks at every touchpoint increases abandonment, raises data-handling risk, and creates operational overhead. In response, more organisations are separating the act of verification from the act of storage, relying on trusted third parties to confirm attributes when needed rather than holding sensitive data themselves.
Heading into 2026, this model is expected to become more common across onboarding, age-restricted access, account recovery and payments. Identity checks are still required, but they are increasingly embedded into user journeys in ways that are faster, more proportionate, and easier to reuse across services.
For partnership teams, the implication is clear. Platforms that treat identity as shared infrastructure are better positioned to scale across sectors and geographies, without layering additional friction or duplicating compliance effort for every new use case.
Where this leaves OneID in 2026
By the end of 2025, it became clear that identity verification works best when it is seamless, reusable and anchored in trusted sources. Solutions that rely heavily on document uploads or repeated checks are increasingly difficult to justify at scale, particularly in conversion-sensitive environments.
OneID’s role as an orchestration layer reflects this shift. By enabling organisations to verify identity and age through banks, mobile networks and other authoritative sources, without storing personal data, it aligns with the direction regulation is already moving.
As enforcement broadens in 2026, the platforms that succeed will be those that treat online identity verification as shared infrastructure rather than a bolt-on control.
Looking ahead
The next twelve months will be less about new laws and more about how existing ones are applied. Online Safety Act enforcement, tighter expectations around KYC, and growing awareness of synthetic identity risk are converging on the same conclusion.
Identity needs to be high-assurance, privacy-safe, and designed for reuse.
If you’re assessing how your platform, partners or customers will meet that bar in 2026, learn how OneID can get you set up in less than 24 hours.
